I am one of America’s top communication theorists and coaches -- and I'm a speaker myself on storytelling, body language, persuasion, and influence. A passionate teacher, I am committed to helping people find clarity in their thinking and ideas – and then delivering them with panache. I have been commissioned by Fortune 50 companies to write for many CEOs and presidents. I have coached people to give Congressional testimony, to prepare TED talks, and to take on the investment community. I have worked widely with political and educational leaders. And I have spoken, led conferences, and moderated panels at venues around the world. My acclaimed book on public speaking, Working the Room: How to Move People to Action through Audience-Centered Speaking, was published by Harvard in 2003 and reprinted in paperback in 2005 as Give Your Speech, Change the World: How to Move Your Audience to Action. My book on authentic communications, Trust Me, was published by Jossey-Bass in January 2009. My latest book, Power Cues, deals with the science of influence, leadership and body language and was published by Harvard in May 2014.

How To Master Yourself, Your Unconscious, And The People Around You: Part 7

Most of our communication is unconscious. Our conscious brains can only handle something like 40 bits of information a second, while our unconscious minds can handle 11 million bits of information per second. We’ve evolved to push much of our behavior – including much of our communication – down to our unconscious minds because they can handle the chores so much more powerfully and rapidly.

What if you could learn to become aware of the important parts of this unconscious mental activity? What if you could control conversations, meetings, and all sorts of interactions among the people around you using conscious awareness of everyone’s unconscious minds, including your own?

That’s brain mastery, and you can learn to do it in 7 steps I’m going to outline in 7 blog posts. Here goes with the last post.

The seventh and final step in brain mastery is to do something you might think impossible: take control of someone else’s brain and synchronize it with yours. The research in this area is in its early stages, but the implications are fascinating.

It turns out that when we communicate with someone else effectively, we do something that has been described colloquially for a few generations: we get on the same wavelength. Literally. Our brain patterns match each other.

Here’s how it works. If I’m telling you a story, and you’re engaged in it, you match your brain waves to mine. And in fact, if I’m telling you a story with a familiar structure, your brain actually anticipates what I’m going to say next. The listener is a nanosecond ahead of the speaker. And that’s good for both parties. We want to be in sync with other people. It’s how we communicate well with others and it’s why good storytelling is so powerful. That feeling of synchronization is a profoundly satisfying one. We want to hear stories, especially ones where we can guess what’s going to happen next, a split second before we’re told.

It’s akin to that feeling you get reading a book or watching a movie and knowing what’s about to happen. Does that reduce your enjoyment of the book or movie? Not at all. In fact, it’s satisfying, because you feel clever and get a sense of control from the experience.

Communing with another human being is one of the highest forms of social being for us humans. At the heart of it is good storytelling. When communications works, we are literally aligned with one another, down to our very brain patterns. That’s both inspiring and reassuring to know, because when we communicate successfully, we are actually experiencing the same thing. We are not alone.

Post Your Comment

Post Your Reply

Forbes writers have the ability to call out member comments they find particularly interesting. Called-out comments are highlighted across the Forbes network. You'll be notified if your comment is called out.